[154] This motion had been made the day before. The Convention had previously agreed that voting in the "first branch" should be in proportion to population.
[155] This begins the rather unhappy "personalities" of the debate.
[156] Cf. note above.
[XXVIII. RATIFYING THE CONSTITUTION][157]
162. George Mason's Objections to the Constitution, 1787
Kate Mason Rowland's Life of George Mason (1892), II, 387-390.
Mason had been one of the most enthusiastic of the Philadelphia Convention in its early stages, writing to his son, after a few weeks, that he would "bury my bones in Philadelphia" rather than injure the business by leaving prematurely, though his private affairs were pressing. But he was more democratic than the Convention, and, before its close, he came to look upon the results with suspicion. He refused to sign the completed constitution, and afterward he opposed its ratification in Virginia. Mason was the chief author of the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776 (No. 136 above). Cf. also No. 163.
There is no Declaration of Rights, and, the laws of the general government being paramount to the laws and constitution of the several States, the Declaration of Rights in the separate States are no security. Nor are the people secured even in the enjoyment of the benefit of the common law.
In the House of Representatives there is not the substance but the shadow only of representation; which can never produce proper information in the legislature, or inspire confidence in the people; the laws will therefore be generally made by men little concerned in, and unacquainted with their effects and consequences.
The Senate have the power of altering all money bills, and of originating appropriations of money, and the salaries of the officers of their own appointment, in conjunction with the president of the United States, although they are not the representatives of the people or amenable to them.